With an economy that has been slow to turn-around, the last thing this area needed was the potential for large job losses, but the one-two punch of Dwight Correctional Center and Kmart announcing closures left residents reeling. They were the top local news stories of 2012.

But there were high points, too, including TeenServe, youngsters who came to the area and performed community service, Pontiac Township High School’s P2D2 program going global and big money lottery winners.

Each year, staff members of the Daily Leader rank their top 10 stories of the year about to end. This year, the editor also added one story that was inadvertently left off the voting sheets, but was too important to ignore.

These are this year’s top 10.

Almost unanimously, the governor’s plan to shutter the state’s only all-female prison at Dwight was the top story.

Announced Feb. 22 by Gov. Pat Quinn, whose plan also included closing the supermax prison of Tamms by the end of August, was met with swift disapproval from area leaders and legislators, as well as prison staff.

There are about 1,000 inmates housed at Dwight and most are maximum-security classified. The prison also serves as an intake center for all females sentenced to prison and has a large mental health unit. The governor called for Dwight’s inmates to be moved to Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln.

There are about 330 union-represented correctional staff and another 20 non-union staff members at DCC.

As part of the closing process, a hearing was required by the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, which was held in Dwight in front of a huge crowd.

COGFA ruled that closing the Dwight prison would adversely affect the female prisoners, a majority of who are from the Chicago area, making it more difficult to stay connected to their families. The detrimental impact to the economy of the Dwight area was also noted.

While leaders usually defer to COGFA, Quinn, noting the state’s dire financial circumstances, went ahead with plans to close the two prisons, as well as two youth detention facilities and three halfway houses for inmates nearing release.

The next battle came from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council #31, which filed a request for an injunction to keep the prisons open, citing safety concerns of both inmates and employees by crowding even more inmates together in an already overcrowded system. AFSCME has said the state’s prison system — with facilities designed for 33,700 inmates — has more than 49,000.

An Alexander County judge, where Tamms is located, granted the injunction and closures were stalled until earlier this month, when the Illinois Supreme Court ordered the injunction lifted. The Department of Corrections wasted no time in nearly clearing out Tamms, with many of those maximum-security inmates sent to Pontiac Correctional Center.

Page 2 of 6 - Employees at the targeted facilities are being moved to new jobs at other facilities. AFSCME spokesman Anders Lindall said affected staff has been told to report to their new locations on Jan. 7.

The minimum-security Tamms inmates are being moved to Sheridan Correctional Center, Solano said. Residents of the West Side Adult Transition Center in Chicago have been moved to North Lawndale and Crossroads centers, also in Chicago. Those in the Southern Illinois Adult Transition Center in Carbondale the Decatur center are going to halfway houses in either Peoria or Chicago.

The closing date has not been determined for Dwight. The Illinois Youth Center at Murphysboro has been empty since July, and 138 youth at the Joliet facility will be moved to centers in St. Charles, Harrisburg and possibly Kewanee, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice has said.

AFSCME is fighting pushing in Alexander County court to reverse an arbitrator's decree that states Quinn followed contract rules when he ordered the closures.

Another big blow to the area’s economy was the announcement that Pontiac’s Kmart store, a fixture in Vermillion Plaza for 40 years, will shutter its doors in January, which ranked second on this year’s list.

A company spokesman said in October that the plans would affect 47 full- and part-time employees at the general merchandise retailer.

Although employees were given the opportunity to apply at other area stores, grim news followed that Kmart stores in Bloomington and Streator would also be closing.

The retailer’s impending loss was not only felt by employees and shoppers, but by the Daily Leader, which had partnered with the store for many years for the Needy Kids Fund. That program was suspended this year and the Leader will look for new retail partners. The program collects donations and then has volunteers take area schoolchildren on shopping trips for needed winter clothing.

Just one year ago, the giant retailer announced the closing of nearly 80 stores, but Illinois locations were spared at that time.

Coming in at No. 3 was a story of a more positive nature, PTHS’ P2D2 program gaining global attention.

Members of Pontiac Township High School science teacher Paul Ritter’s Prescription Drug Disposal Program (P2D2) team returned from the Volvo Adventure Awards in Gothenburg, Sweden, in June with a program that is now ranked, not third in the state or the country, but one of the top three environmental education programs in the world. The group received a check for $4,000 that Ritter said will be used to help support and fund other P2D2 programs.

In May, PTHS learned that P2D2 would represent the United States in the Volvo competition. There were just 12 countries selected to present environmental education programs.

Page 3 of 6 - The last three teams, from the United States, Paraguay and Brazil, had the top programs. These teams were chosen over teams from the UK, China, Croatia, Egypt, Fiji, Russia, Tanzania, Turkey and Macedonia.

The Paraguay team, which took first place and a $10,000 prize, presented a campaign started by young people to prevent breeding grounds for mosquitoes, which transmit infection from open water storages and solid waste. The team from Brazil, which took second place and a $6,000 prize, presented a campaign to educate farmers on the safe handling and disposal of pesticides and their containers.

The Pontiac Township High School student-developed National Prescription Pill and Drug Disposal Program was chosen number one in the United States for the Volvo Adventure global environmental competition.

Four local students as well as a student from Reedsburg Area High School in Reedsburg, Wis., represented the United States in Sweden this June at the international environmental problem-solving program created by Volvo Car Corp. in partnership with the United Nations.

To qualify for the program, students aged 13 to 16 had to plan and execute environmental protection efforts in their local community. One team from each participating country was awarded an all-expenses-paid trip to Sweden to present their project.

There were more than 240 teams from 45 countries entering the contest.

The P2D2 team was be accompanied by P2D2 program director Paul Ritter and Wisconsin P2D2 program director Krystal Schara.

The next top story featured the wide-ranging drought of 2012, which affected many growing states across the country.

Around here, rainfall petered out by June and rainfall was 10 inches less than the previous year, leaving farmers to watch crops withering in the fields.

Several fields were plowed early, but most managed to salvage some crops thanks to spotty rains and better strains of seeds.

Those better hybrids and federal crop insurance programs kept this year’s drought from reaching the devastation level of the 1988 drought.

Lessons learned from that drought more than 20 years ago included large retention ponds for city water supply. This year, water supply was not threatened, but several took precautionary measures, including restaurants only serving glasses of water on request.

Not only was income lost to farmers, but resulting crop shortages resulted in higher produce costs at the grocery store.

The area not only suffered the news of lost employment and crops, but the loss of several prominent residents, including Pontiac’s biggest cheerleader Elizabeth “Betty” Estes.

The deaths of Estes, Margaret “Peg” Spalding and Granville “Granny” Pletz this year have left large holes in community service, which ranked the story No. 5.

Betty Estes died June 20 at age 81. She had been the city’s first tourism director and was instrumental in so many things coming to Pontiac, like the Route 66 Museum and Lincoln statue and securing the tourism trolley. She and her late husband, Dal, were the forces behind the Livingston County War Museum and she pushed for the renovation of the Jennie Hodgers/Albert Cashier historical home in Saunemin. She had been named a Pontiac Citizen of the Year by the Rotary Club and she and Dal had served as grand marshals of the Threshermen’s Parade.

Page 4 of 6 - Margaret “Peg” Spalding, a Pontiac native who was well-versed in local history, died July 24. She was 91.

Described as a “quiet hero,” and “a true Pontiac supporter in every way,” Spalding met challenges as a young widow with three small children.

Finding various full-time employment opportunities, she still found time for her children and other passions. She was the founding editor of the Magazine of Livingston County well known in the community for her portrayals of historic women such as Susan B. Anthony. She also wrote and performed the “Miss Margaret” radio program for WPOK Radio in Pontiac, and had a children’s poem published in Jack and Jill magazine.

Spalding was the first woman member and the first woman president of the Pontiac Kiwanis Club.

She was active in Vermillion Players Community Theater, and was on the founding committee for the Livingston County War Museum.

Granville, “Granny,” Pletz was an office manager and ambulance service coordinator at Duffy-Baier-Snedecor Funeral Home and its predecessors for 42 years, training dozens of emergency responders. He died Oct. 13 at age 90.

Pletz became one of the first emergency medical technicians in the area in 1972. He helped run the ambulance service, which started with a converted station wagon at what was then Behrendt Funeral Home. He worked there until 2004. Fellow emergency personnel recalled that he was totally dedicated to his job.

He was a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II and had operated a shoe store for several years in downtown Pontiac following his military service. He and his late wife, Dorothy, had opened their home to many foster children, two of whom they adopted, along with raising their own five children. He became one of the first single adoptive parents in the state of Illinois.

Pletz was also involved in the community, helping to start Cub Scout Pack 175 and build the Little League field at Humiston Park. He was named the 1987 Rotary Club’s Citizen of the Year.

At No. 6 was the county’s problems with the newly built Law and Justice Center meeting handicapped-accessible standards.

After $16 million was spent on the new Law and Justice Center in Pontiac, which opened in late 2011, the Livingston County Board was notified in January that there were 99 items found in non-compliance with the Environmental Barriers Act, the Illinois Accessibility Code and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 with updates issued in 2010. The non-compliance issues were field by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office.

The majority of the problems concerned signs, including the absence of Braille on some and height of certain signs. The remainder included parking issues, wheelchair accessibility at the entrance to the building, in bathrooms and inside the courtrooms, and the force it takes to open doors throughout the building.

Page 5 of 6 - These issues were found during site inspections performed by Madigan’s office on Nov. 1, 9 and 16 after a formal complaint was filed with the Attorney General’s office.

Most of the non-compliance issues required very little to fix and were promptly dealt with, but the remaining outstanding issues proved more costly, such as curbs needing to be replaced, ramps needing to be leveled and smoothed out and courtroom issues dealing with noise and handicapped-accessible ramps.

Some of those issues have been addressed and a recent committee meeting resulted in the resolve to quickly take care of remaining issues. Any cost to the county is still to be determined.

While those numbers definitely did not look good for the county, another set of numbers proved to be just the ticket for a pair of friends from Flanagan and Minonk.

Rakesh “Rocky” Patel, Flanagan, and Howard “Bob” Baker, Minonk, purchased a Powerball lottery ticket worth $1 million in late November from Bart’s Supermarket in Flanagan. After taxes, the men were on track to receive about $350,000 apiece.

They were presented with a ceremonial oversized check Dec. 6 at the grocery store, where Patel works.

Both men said they would put away most of the money to pay for their children’s education and investments for their future.

Patel, who works for his cousin, Shalin Patel, who received $10,000 to his store for selling the winning ticket, together donated money to the Flanagan Grade School.

A $250,000 winning lottery ticket was sold March 26 at Trainor BP on Howard Street in Pontiac, but that winner was not publicly announced.

Another positive story was TeenServe at No. 8.

For five days, teens from seven states scraped, painted, cleaned and repaired homes for Pontiac residents as part of a faith-based service project during the week of June 10.

There were 247 campers and more than 75 volunteers from the community making up this year’s TeenServe project. Twenty youth groups from across seven states worked on 45 projects, all of which included painting in some fashion. Ten of these projects also included minor construction and 10 more included building or re-building ramps and steps.

TeenServe is a division of Cross-Walk Ministries, Inc., a non-profit corporation in existence since 1985. Its work camp is a one-week mission trip for junior and senior high youth groups with work during the day and camp activities during the evening hours.

The students came from places in Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio. They camped out at Pontiac Township High School for the week.

Many area residents expressed great appreciation for the work that was done on their homes.

An act of heroism by two young boys made the top 10 list at No. 9.

Page 6 of 6 - Kim Rigsby of Fairbury was driving in Chenoa in late April when she suffered a seizure and couldn’t control her vehicle. What could have been a tragedy was avoided in large part due to the quick thinking of her two sons, Peyton, 11, and Tobey, 13. Peyton helped steer the car, which reached speeds nearing 80 mph, after being unable to dislodge her foot off the gas pedal.

Peyton steered the slowing vehicle away from any traffic on the road, driving through two yards, back onto Route 24, then directly into the front porch of a six-unit apartment complex. Both boys were commended for keeping calm and helping avoid any loss of life.

They were honored for their actions at the annual Saluting Our Heroes Breakfast, sponsored by the American Red Cross of the Heartland on Thursday, Nov. 8. Their entire family was in attendance, including father, Darcy, brother, Seth, and grandmothers, Barb Taylor and Judy Black.

Rounding out the top 10 stories was Pontiac’s 175th birthday party, which garnered a lot of positive praise from current and former residents who came back to participate in the multitude of events celebrating the city’s longevity.

The big birthday bash was held the weekend of July 27 and 28 and featured performances by the Vermillion Players and a barbershop group. Local singers and musicians also displayed their talents, as did students of the local Dancenter. There was a free picnic with birthday cake and old-fashioned bed races along the street. The evenings were capped off with showing movies on a portable screen erected in Humiston-Riverside Park, including the finale “Grandview, USA,” a movie filmed in Pontiac.

Other stories just missing the top 10 included the guilty plea and sentencing of former Odell and Pontiac Public Library head librarian Eric Colclasure, who in July was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to pay Odell library $30,000 in restitution; high speed rail finally arriving, after years of talk, and one year of getting new tracks in place, the first Amtrak train went from Dwight to Pontiac traveling 110 mph, with more of the Lincoln Route to be ready for high speed rail in 2013; and the story of Arnold Munz of Fairbury, who allegedly fired a shotgun at two men in a vehicle and later at police before holding off police in a standoff at his home, which eventually ended without incident in late March. He faces numerous charges in Livingston County Circuit Court.